Fizz, Bubble & Pop! Experimenting with Vinegar + Baking Soda

Mad Science Week is the perfect time for fizzy, popping, messy experiments!

This is an easy, fun & inepensive experiment that will delight your little ones!

The Lil Divas kept doing it over & over - never tiring of the results.

Experimenting With Baking Soda & Vinegar

What You Need:

baking soda

vinegar

spoons

clear cups or containers

the clear cups were fun to use but you can use whatever you have on hand - even muffin tins

food coloring - optional

*I recommend a tray to hold any spills - it helps minimize the mess!*

What To Do:

1. I added a few drops of food color to each spoon for a fun effect - it was definitely more visual

and the Lil Divas were delighted at each new color since they had no idea which color they would get.

2. Add baking soda to each spoon - I was generous since I wanted a big reaction.

3. Add vinegar to each cup - I filled our cups 2/3 of the way

I wanted it to fizz, pop & overflow for dramatic effect!

If you prefer less mess you can fill it up half-way or less -

but I say use a tray & GO FOR IT!

smelling the vinegar to see if they could guess what it was

4. Pick a spoon & drop the baking soda into the cup

we needed to stir a bit to get the food color going.

Her reaction to the 1st one was PRICELESS!

﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿They LOVED it!

Nothing beats a good colorful explosion!

Of course the Lil Divas wanted to see what happened if we added more baking soda after the fizz had died down. So that's exactly what they did. They added lots & lots more baking soda.

The cups bubbled and fizzed again but not as big

so they decided they needed more vinegar.

BAM!

Adding more vinegar gave us lots of fizzy overflow!

The Lil Divas excitement over this experiment never waned.

Below, is the last shot I took of them before saying we had to clean -up!

They still marveled over the reactions caused by the baking soda & vinegar.

What a successful experiment!

Here's what I was left with to clean up!
Not bad for such excitement & fun -
I was glad I used the deep tray!

If you are interested in the science behind this fun experiment -
basically the baking soda and the vinegar create an acid-base reaction
and the two chemicals work together to create a gas - carbon dioxide.

Love the pic of your daughter's face when she sees the first one! Totally priceless. We had fun doing this for the 30 Days To Hands On Play challenge, but didn't add the food coloring - the kids will love this one! Thanks for sharing :-)

my boys are really in to these bi carb and vinegar experiments at the mo. we have been adding lots of science to our blog recently! Like the idea of this too. will be letting him try this one too! Thanks for sharing xx

We did this this morning and really enjoyed it. Thank you! You have some really neat ideas and it is joy to see what you are upto. Only a few things work for my own children sonce they are older--but the ideas that are for the younger children I file for future use with my daycare children. I ran a daycare for 11 years and am closed to spend time with my own family for awhile. Thanks again.

The expression spoke volumes. We had a major disaster today with my son's fancy volcano science kit...nothing happened. Tomorrow I'm breaking out the baking soda and vinegar to give the eruption real oomph!

Just stopping by to let you know that I've featured your craft on Family Fun Crafts! You can see it here:http://funfamilycrafts.com/fizz-bubble-pop-science-experiment/

If you have other kid friendly crafts, I'd love it if you would submit them. :) If you would like to display a featured button on your site, you can grab one from the right side bar of your post above.

Just did this with my 4 kiddos ages 8-12. Got a different reaction from each of them. My 8 year old surprised me the most by wanting to mix colors after the fact to see what new colors she could achieve. She amazed herself by making a brown that resembled root-beer. Thanks for the great ideas.

I'm a preschool teacher and we do this often. Another extension is to use different flavors of koolaid. It doesn't change the reaction, but the smell. We give the children a small cup with vinegar, a dropper, one with baking soda and another with a package of koolaid, a spoon and let them explore.This is great in a 6 count muffin pan so they have 6 different sections to have reactions. Also, for a different activity, we use a baking dish, like a 9x13 and pour an inch of baking soda on the bottom and give them colored vinegar and droppers. Tons of fun!

Oh, we have done the kool-aid & my girls LOVE it! It is fun - I hid the colors under some baking soda and made them guess the flavor once they got their eruption. It was lots of fun. I shared it on the blog here - http://www.momto2poshlildivas.com/2012/09/science-fun-scented-vinegar-and-baking.html

Found this on Pinterest - Worked awesome for my group of 4 little boys- all 5 years old. They squealed every time it flowed over!! Definitely a good idea to have the deep pans. I'd also recommend getting the big gallon jug of white vinegar at Walmart. After we were done "exploding," we mixed the colors together and predicted what colors it would make. Thanks!!